


Heart Beats Slow.

by Mintsea



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fix It Fic, Fluff and Angst, One Shot, olicity - Freeform, post 4x19
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 16:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6712657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mintsea/pseuds/Mintsea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>Post 4x19 - The Canary Cry. One-shot. </b> </p><p>After a candid conversation with Donna, Felicity and Oliver have a heart to heart in the Bunker following Laurel’s wake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart Beats Slow.

**Author's Note:**

> Post 4x19, one-shot. After a candid conversation with Donna, Felicity and Oliver have a heart to heart in the Bunker following Laurel’s wake.
> 
> Sorry, this is once again written very quickly, with very little editing.

**Heart Beats Slow.**

by Mintsea

 

It’s late by the time the wake starts to wrap up, and Felicity feels like a ball of nervous energy.

She’s exhausted across all physical, emotional and mental dimensions, her feet raw from the black pumps she’s worn since nine am, and she longs to pop out her contacts and crawl into bed. 

But, she has work to do back at the bunker once she leaves, and there is nothing more motivating that being at the wake of one of your closest friends to help solidify your priorities. It’s what had drawn her back to the bunker straight after Laurel’s death. And it is what will keep her there until Damien Darhk, Andy Diggle and H.I.V.E are taken down. 

Felicity glances around the room at the small crowd still gathered in Laurel’s apartment. Thea, god love her, had insisted on holding it here, where her friends, family and acquaintances could say their final goodbyes. 

But the whole thing has felt uneasy and overwhelming, and she suspects that’s why twenty minutes ago, Oliver had excused himself from a conversation with Quentin, kissed Thea on the cheek and slipped stealthily out the front door.

It doesn’t help that her mother is here, right in the middle of things, handing around platters of now dry sandwiches and offering cups of tea, teetering about on her 6 inch heels and black knee length bandage dress. 

Felicity catches her by the wrist as she strides out of the kitchen again, pulling her into the hallway. 

“Ouch, Hon…what are you doing?” Donna stage whispers with confusion, snatching her wrist out of Felicity’s grasp and rubbing it dramatically. “I have to get Dinah’s sister Tara a cup of tea and I forgot to ask if she takes milk!” 

Felicity holds a finger up to her mother, silencing the squeaking older blond. “No Mom, you don’t. That’s enough hostessing,” Felicity says with a low voice. “You’re running around like the fracking energiser bunny,” she chides. “It’s making me dizzy.” 

Donna frowns, bringing her hands to rest on her hips. “Well Hon, I’m just trying to make myself useful,” she huffs, blowing her errant fringe out of eyes, her voice laced with hurt. “I don’t know any of these people except your friends and Quentin, and I want to be here for him.” Her gaze drifts over towards her partner, who’s talking to Diggle by the window in the lounge room, and after a moment or two she looks back at her exhausted daughter. 

“He is so devastated, I’m not really sure what to do. I’m not good at these kind of things. And, I’m certainly not good at these things,” she pulls a face, the left corner of her mouth slipping out at an odd angle as she says through gritted teeth,“ _sober_.” 

Felicity huffs a small laugh, one that highlights the elephant in the room that everyone here would love to have an alcoholic drink in their hands right now, but are being much too polite given Laurel and her father are recovering alcoholics. A dry wake feels incredibly at odds with every funeral she’s been to over the past couple of years. She’s always had a glass of champagne to clutch to. “I know,” she says squeezing it. “I could do with a drink too.” 

Donna smiles sadly, reaching up to brush Felicity’s cheek tenderly. “How is Oliver doing?” 

Felicity exhales and tips her chin up sadly. “I’m not sure anyone really knows how Oliver is feeling,” she says bitingly, before she can control herself, suddenly swept up in the anger that had fuelled her candid conversation with him in the limo on the way over, and the anger that has fuelled so many sleepless night since she left him.

And then, she realises where they are, at the wake of her good friend, at the wake of a woman he loved very dearly, and her face falls, and she slams her eyes closed, feeling guilty and overwrought. 

“I don’t mean that,” she says earnestly, trying to ground herself for a moment, before she opens her eyes again to see her mother looking at her with that sappy puppy dog face she’s used when talking about Oliver for the past few weeks. “I’m just…still coming to terms with wanting to be there for him and trying to work out how on earth to do that.” 

“You know him best Hon, more than anyone else. Probably more than anyone will ever really know him,” she says comfortingly. And then Donna smiles. 

Felicity huffs a sigh, knowing she’s right on all fronts. 

“You know,” Donna continues, figuring while she’s got a captive audience in her daughter on relationship advice, she’s going to go for it, “sometimes death has a funny way of helping our hearts realise that things that seem unrepairable, are just temporarily broken.” 

Felicity groans. “Mom, I don’t need you to be Oliver’s cheerleader right now-“ 

Donna sighs, shifting her weight tiredly from foot to foot while Felicity buries her head in her hands. “I’m not being Oliver’s cheerleader Hon - you know I support you wholeheartedly.”

Donna lowers her voice to a whisper and her lip starts to tremble. “I guess what I am trying to say is that, we can lose love ones so unexpectedly, so quickly and without warning. I almost lost you once Hon, to this Damien Darhk. And now he’s killed Laurel. I can’t help thinking that he’s going to try to hurt you, or Oliver, or Quentin, again.” 

Donna swipes at the tears that are now threatening to fall and it prompts Felicity to reach out and place her hand on Donna’s shoulder comfortingly.

“Hey,” Felicity says, squeezing Donna’s shoulder. “He’s not going to hurt me again okay? Or Quentin. Or Oliver.We’re going to get Damien Darhk and he’s going to pay for what he did to Laurel.” 

Donna nods, sniffing back tears. “You promise?” Donna asks, knowing Felicity can’t by any means actually promise anything she’s just said. 

Felicity wonders if Donna thinks the _we_ she’s talking about refers to her and Oliver directly; and she realises she doesn’t mind if that is the implication that extends from those words. Because they will. As a team. Together. Like they always do. 

Felicity smiles, and she hopes it’s confident enough to reassure her mother. “I promise,” she says, hugging Donna tightly.

Their hug is interrupted by Diggle, who, having just stepped into the hallway and witnessing the tender moment of daughter comfort mother, clears his throat apologetically. “Sorry to interrupt but I’ve got to check in on Lyla and Sara. Can I give either of you a lift home?” 

Donna shakes her head as she breaks the embrace with Felicity. She gives John an appreciative smile.“I think I’ll stick around a little bit, help Thea clean up,” she says. “Make sure Dinah and Tara get back to their hotel okay. But baby, you go. You’ve had an exhausting day.” 

Felicity moves in to give her mother another comforting hug and then nods to John. Donna hugs John carefully, wishing his girls well, and then tugs the hem of her bandage dress down and totters back into the kitchen. 

“Do you mind dropping me at the bunker?” Felicity asks as her and John fetch their coats from the rack at the front door. “My car is there.” 

“No problem,” John says, holding out the coat for Felicity to slip on. 

Felicity is pretty sure John doesn't believe her about the car because they both know that the bunker is exactly where Oliver disappeared to. 

 

*

“I thought I’d find you here,” Felicity says, walking up the steps to the platform a brown paper bag in her hand.

Oliver, who’d watched her arrive via the CCTV from his position in Felicity’s chair at her computers, spins the chair around to face her and offers a small smile.“I needed to get some air,” he admits, hunched in his chair, his discarded tie and cufflinks sitting by the keyboard, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. 

Felicity nods and holds up the brown paper bag, revealing a bottle of Russian vodka. “I thought we could use a drink,” she says, placing it down on the desk beside him. “It’s not authentic and nowhere near as potent as that paint thinner you had in your old trunk, but, its a little higher quality than Smirnoff, so we’re winning there.” 

Oliver smiles appreciatively, and reaches for the coffee mug he had been drinking from earlier, downing the remaining cold liquid. He makes work unscrewing the lid and pouring out some vodka while Felicity pulls off her trenchcoat and drops it on the floor next to her handbag. Oliver gets to his feet holding out the mug for Felicity, which she takes eagerly. 

“To Laurel Lance,” Felicity says, holding her mug to Oliver’s bottle of vodka as a toast, “an amazing ADA…an incredible hero…and our beautiful friend.”The last few words catch in her throat and leave them both a bit breathless. 

Oliver chinks the vodka against Felicity’s mug. “To Laurel,” he murmurs.

They both raise their drink to their lips, and while Oliver takes a mouthful out of the vodka bottle and sighs, his thirst for something the take the edge off the day sated, Felicity gulps down a fair portion of hers and then hisses as it burns the back of her throat. 

“I’ve been dying to do that since about 9am this morning,” she admits wiping her left thumb across her lip. She slips out of her high heels and then heads across the platformand down the stairs to the conference table. 

Felicity contemplates sitting down in one of the chairs before deciding to sit _on_ the conference table, her legs swinging off the edge as she sips again at her vodka. Oliver follows her, hesitantly at first, before she pats the table top, and he too sits on the edge of the table, his ankle crossed, taking another swig from the bottle. After he’s finish, Felicity holds out her mug again and Oliver pours another nip or two into it. 

"Your eulogy today was beautiful,” she says, watching him pour. “I didn't have a chance to tell you at the cemetery."

"Thank you." 

"She loved you very much,” she says carefully, knowing its a bit of a minefield, “she would be very touched."

Oliver exhales and places the bottle beside him on the table. ”I can't believe she's gone,” he says wringing his hands together, staring out around the bunker. “We’ve come in and out of each other's lives so many times. I know I never wanted her to be part of any of _this_ , but I was so terrified she was so angry at Sara’s death it would get her killed.” Oliver smiles, “but she saved my ass so many times. I wouldn’t be here without her. Even when I was too stubborn to thank her for it.” 

Felicity laughs and places her mug on the table beside the bottle. Oliver is silent for a moment, and she diverts her eyes to him, and finds him looking at her, his eyes bright and sad and quite honestly so heartbreaking, it nestles a sharp ache into her chest. She drops her gaze to the table and realises that they are so close, their fingers are splayed together, almost interlocking but not daring to touch.

“She always pushed me to fight for you,” he admits to Felicity breathlessly, and in an instant, her eyes are locked back on his. “Whenever I did something stupid…when Darhk kidnapped you…when you were shot. Even with William.” He sighs, reaching for the vodka and taking a sip.  “I caused her so much pain over the years and she put that aside and urged me to fight for you. To fight for _us_.”

“The last conversation we had,” Oliver continues, “she told me I was the love of her life, but that she knew that you are the love of mine. I love you both, in different ways, and now both of you are gone.”

Felicity slides off the table, and Oliver half expects her to walk away. In fact, he almost wishes she does, that she puts him out of his misery again, because this _friendship_ they’ve had over the past few days, working together again, working around the details for the funeral have been hard. He’s missed her even more. Because it isn’t like before they were together. It’s worse. Because now he knows how her being in his life has changed him, he can’t go back to looking at her longingly from across the room wondering what if. Now he knows what if, and it _hurts._

But Felicity doesn’t walk away. Instead she moves towards him and out of sheer muscle memory, he uncrosses his ankles and widens his legs, expecting her to step close to him like she had so many times before. And to his surprise, she does.

“I’m right here Oliver,” Felicity whispers, leaning her forehead against his, her hands on his knees. He lifts his hand cautiously, to brush the back of his hand across her cheek softly. “You always have a way of pulling me back,” she murmurs. 

“I can’t do this without you,” he says, his hands cradling her face tenderly, a thumb brushing across her bottom lip. “Any of it.” 

She moves her hands to his wrists, gently wrapping her fingers around them, holding him close. “Oliver, what I said in the limo-“ 

“Felicity,” he says, clearing his throat, saving her from repeating her plea for him to murder Darhk. It’d been rattling around his mind all afternoon and the mere thought of taking yet another life, adding another name to the list that was already too long, made his stomach clench. “I _will_ do anything to avenge Laurel’s murder…like I would for any of you. All of you.” 

She knows exactly how much pain those words had caused him today. She’s been telling herself all afternoon that was why she’d said them, because she knew it played exactly on the fears that he needs to motivate him, but after they’d left her mouth she’d felt absolutely wretched. She manipulated him, played on his biggest insecurities, on his biggest weaknesses, with malicious intent in her own blinding grief. It had been low, and hurtful, and came from a place inside of her she was very ashamed of. The same place that had let her joke about Diggle being one illegitimate child away from being Oliver in the bunker only days ago. 

“What I said in the limo,” she says again, “I meant most of it. _You_ have to kill Darhk. But _I_ am going to help you.” 

He breathes a sign of relief, leaning his forehead against hers again. “And then?” he asks, his eyes fluttering closed in relief. 

She squeezes his wrists again, forcing his eyes open. “Andthen we go to Bali,” she says like it is the simplest thing in the world. 

Oliver huffs a laugh, running a thumb across her cheek, before brushing his lips against hers gently. It’s soft and tender, and full of a promise that they are making their way back to each other. But it’s going to be a slow road, with Darhk, Andy and H.I.V.E the major roadblocks they need to clear before they can be _them_ again. 

“…for a holiday only,” Felicity adds, placing a soft kiss on his nose with a blinding smile. “I do after-all, have a billion dollar company to run and a partner who has an expensive hobby.” 

“Until then?” he asks. 

Felicity smiles. “We get to work,” she says untangling herself from him and holding out her hand to lead him towards her computers. 

He gladly takes it, squeezing her hand tightly in his. 

_Together._

 

_THE END._

 

_*_

_So that limo scene was rough huh?_


End file.
